NEW HOUSE WITH BOTTLE WALLS AT QUEENSTOWN

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28158, 22 December 1956, Page 3

NEW HOUSE WITH BOTTLE WALLS AT QUEENSTOWN

“The Press*' Special Service

DUNEDIN. December 21. ' Visitors to Queenstown this year j will see something new in building j as they skirt the lakeside before turning into the town. A builder who has developed a fine camping ground with cabins and hu‘« I ]and a mountain view has added another bottle house to his collection.' This is not a cabin, as are the pre- • vious two. but is the nerve centre of I the camp—his home, office and camp j store. It is a two-storey building with three walls at least made almost entirely of bottles, necks outwards. The pattern he has contrived by the judicious use of dark and light bottles is quite effective. So. also, is the use of cartwheels as window frames. These windows face the lake and the road. The use of rough pine timber for weatherboards, giving a rustic effect, is as pleasing to the eye as the use of Canadian timber in more expensive buildings. The question the builder and owner is asked most frequently is: “How many bottles did it take for this building?” And he does not know. He would make a guess and say that they may number anything between 12,000 and 15.000. Perhaps after the holidays he may

be able to give an exact count, for he plans to hold a competition which will give him the number. One of the cabins, an earlier example of his bottle house idea, contains more than 6500 bottles, and it is only a cabin and does not approach the size of his latest effort. The idea of using bottles in this fashion is claimed to be original. The old White Horse Hotel at Becks, Central Otago, however, has part of a wall made of bottles. The remarkable thing about the Queenstown glass houses is that they remain intact and do not suffer from stones any more than the windows of a house. Whatever may be the comments. for words do not hurt the building, the town has been rid of thousands of non-saleable bottles that would have been dumped to become a menace.